“And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly” (1 Thessalonians 5:23a, NKJV).
In New Testament language, sanctify is identical to “make holy.” So, Paul prayed for the Christians at Thessalonica to be wholly holy!
Some Christians may not understand that they are holy at all. Being painfully aware of their sins, they may even deny being in any way holy. But holiness is not sinless perfection! Making sinners holy involves two basic things. First, we are cleansed from our sins in the blood of Christ. At that point, we are set apart from the world as the Lord adds us to His church (Acts 2:47). Cleansed and set apart – that’s being made holy.
Just as we urge a child we have just bathed to stay out of the mud puddle, so God wants us to stay clean in our behavior. 1 Thessalonians 5:22 exhorts, “Abstain from every form of evil.”
Paul continued to pray that the Thessalonians’ “whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless unto the coming day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 23b). Paul’s purpose was not to make hair-splitting distinctions between spirit and soul. Rather, he used all three terms (spirit, soul, body) to refer to the entire person, in the same way that “lock, stock, and barrel” refers to the entire rifle. Paul wanted every aspect of their entire person (and ours) to be holy! Then, when we stand before the throne of God to be judged, we will be like those in Revelation 7:14 who had “washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
Initially, we are made holy at baptism. But holiness is an ongoing process. We are to “cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Corinthians 7:1).
Are you wholly holy?
–Joe Slater
